Depending on the length of your trip, you’ll have to allow for one or more charging stops, and that you might have to wait your turn as well. All of this can put paid to those long drive days that petrol-filled cars have no problem making.
This is not a problem for us, as older drivers who have limited our maximum kilometrage to about 400 a day, and for whom a longer trip is about plotting an overnighter at a town with a charger – and thereby getting to know some interesting places. Tiny Jugiong, for example, is a foodies’ heaven, with the St George Hotel, Long Track Pantry Cafe and local wines at the Wine Cellar.
When you have an EV, planning a trip takes on a different rhythm. Credit: Bloomberg
More sadly, there’s Tarcutta, a dying town dotted with closed shopfronts and a basic but pleasant motel, as well as (smartly) a charge point. It’s a practical halfway stopover on the way to Melbourne, with one very moving claim to fame: the Truck Drivers’ Memorial, marking the deaths of far too many truck drivers on the road, many of them just young men. A salutary reminder that driving is a risky business, in any vehicle, however fuelled.
When it’s by electricity, we can look forward to more efficient batteries and faster charge points in the future, but for now, it has challenges which could and should be overcome.
Dr Anne Ring is a health sociologist, freelance writer, and author of Engaging with Ageing: What matters as we grow older